Who's to blame?(mgt vs labor)

[PCL_128]

Posted by PCL_128:

"...when profits are good pilots will and should negotiate for a better contract. If the company's making more money, the people that keep it running (labor) should get more money..."

I guess that's why this issue will just keep going round and round. Not everybody sees it that way. Some think differently. Not wrong, just different.

If I own a company and pay an employee a wage to work for me then the profits or losses are my business. In good times, I may or may decide to give raises, but it's my decision. I can certainly understand the need to keep good employees by paying them well but I may choose to not increase salaries because I have other uses for the money; expansion, dividends, rainy day fund, etc. I don't have to keep raising pay 20+%. I can say, enough.

And this attitude that it's "my business" is what inspires labor to fight so hard for pay increases. It's just the attitude you have that annoys us so much. It's not just your money as mgmt, it's the company's money. As part of the company, I deserve a part of the increased profits. Afterall, where would you be without all of us in labor doing the real work?

 

[PCL_128]

Re: Profit sharing

I believe that SWA has a profit sharing program that deals with when things are good. I also believe that UAL was owned by the employees who would have benefited from the success of the airline.

Now would you be making $400k a year if I was running an airline without a union, no. Would you be making $40k a year, not any more likely.

Unfortunately, for many airline owners, the 40k is much more likely. In fact, even lower is probably what they would be going for. Look at New York Air, the alter-ego airline that Lorenzo started up by raping TXI of it's aircraft. His goal was to create a non-union airline where he could pay people as low as possible. This is the attitude of most people in mgmt. They never learned from Frank's mistakes, and they never will. JetBlue is the big exception: the non-union airline that treats their employees very well. Sure, they aren't making 250k a year, but they still make a very good pay rate, have good schedules, and have a good relationship with mgmt. You see, they trust each other. They haven't been stabbed in the back repeatedly by mgmt. That's the way things should be.

The distance between what the few remaing so called majors pay at the top and the rest of the flying world is considerable. It has become, up to now, like the lottery. You get in and it is like some kind of entitlement program.

There are a ton of people who spend massive amounts of time away from home. You are going to have to make a real stretch to get me empathetic with my 767 driver buddies. They laugh about it as we play golf only they play a good deal more than I do.

And those 767 drivers spent many years on reserve, with sh*tty schedules, with low pay, etc... They took many years to get to that pay rate and to that many days off. You act like all of us have it so good. The reality is that most of us work pretty hard and have to work decades to get the days off and pay you keep referring to. Those 767 guys deserve everything they get.

 

[Birdstrike]

Houston, We Have A Problem...

Psted by PCL_128:

"...Afterall, where would you be without all of us in labor doing the real work...?"


Give me a break. What do you think you are, a brain surgeon? We're pilots and our name is legion...and therein lies the problem. There are to many of us looking for work and Pan Am, et. al, is cranking out more all the time.

There is a new generation of pilots who read the full page glossies in FLYING who won't instruct and will work for much less than you with your holy grail of "contract advances" , PCL.

Where would I be if I were management? I guess I'd look for the best pilot I could hire for the least amount of money. And right now, I'd say the pickings were pretty good.

You can be annoyed all you want at mgmt. UAL is bankrupt and we need a new paradigm. Your remark that I quoted above ain't gonna get us there. That kind of remark is for skilled labor that is in short supply and can't be replaced. Neither is true of us.


Indiana Wants Me, Lord I Can't Go Back There

 

[MsFan]

Good debate here, I like the argument that Birdstrike has made. At some point pilots at the majors might need to say "I'm making (90K, 110K, 150K, whatever the case may be) to work about 2 weeks a month flying airplanes. I think I can get by on that." I admit I'm a fuzzy cheeked youngster in this airline business stuff, so I haven't had time to turn in to the old, bitter union guy. Yes, we deserve to be well compensated for helping a company make a profit. But who says that making (90K, 110K, 150K, whatever the case may be) is not well compensated? To say "I need to make the absolute maximum that Management can afford" is to invite the mess we're seeing at UAL. It's not like Management is trying to pay pilots 36K a year while they're making record profits. I'm not saying that pilots shouldn't try to make the best wage we can. But at some point we need to appreciate the fact we're able to make some pretty damm good coin at this job wiithout demanding 20% pay increases every time our contract is up just because the company had a good year.

 

[FastCargo]

Points to ponder

An interesting discussion...here's my .02...

First, has anyone been reading on the message boards (NON flying boards, Yahoo, etc) on the reactions to UAL filing bankruptcy? The majority of opinions have been of the "To hell with United, service sucks, prices too high, etc, etc" There hasn't been a whole lot of sympathy about pilot givebacks either. Unfortunately, your typical 'person on the street' opinion about mainline pilot salaries gets about as much sympathy as a baseball player's strike. A company is in the business to make money, and it does so from it's customers. If the customers won't support the company, that company can't survive.

Second, exactly how hard does a mainline airline pilot work? The first day I showed up at my company, one of the chief pilots basically said that we all had already done our hardest flying. From what I have seen so far, he's correct. In the earlier days of flying, when GPS, weather sats, widespread radar coverage, extensive safety regulations, etc. didn't exist, the safe conduct of a flight was HEAVILY dependent on an experienced and seasoned crew. The aircraft weren't as reliable and ergonomic (sp?), CRM didn't exist, and TCAS was a gleam in an engineers eye. Now, most mainline aircraft, and a lot of regionals, have the most advanced and reliable systems onboard, along with advancing ground support. Accident and incident rates, even after deregulation and the explosive growth of air travel, are lower than ever. Mainline flying is T/O, fly, land, the majority (if not all) planned by the company. In other words, should pay continue to increase if the actual effort of the job has declined? I'm not talking about a person moving up the ladder...but does a 777 captain work as hard now as a 707 captain did back in his time?

Personally, I don't need or want an 'industry leading' contract (God, I am TIRED of hearing that term). What I want is stability in my job, which means a company that can save up when times are good, to weather when times are bad. If that means I don't make 'industry leading' wages, that's okay 'cause what it does mean is a steady income. There has to be a compromise between 'effectively less than minimum wage' and 'wringing out every last golden egg'...

Okay, back to work...

FastCargo

 

[cl-65link]

I'll repeat what I heard at an ALPA meeting earlier this week, with regards to United and their ESOP,"I believe you must either be an owner or an operator", ie management or labor. This from a person in ALPA, who works out of the main office in DC, and has first-hand knowledge of United and USAir's current problems.